Family-friendly workplace reform : prospects for change
By: WAX, Amy L
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ArticlePublisher: Thousand Oaks : SAGE, November 2004The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science 596, p. 36-61Abstract: The recent surge of women and mothers into the workforce has generated a call for changes that make it easier to combine employment with family life. Because neoclassical economic theory assumes that existing workplace structures are efficient, suggestions for reform have encountered resistance on the grounds that family-friendly reforms will prove costly for firms and society as a whole. In particular, so-called "accommodation mandates", wich require employers to extent benefits like paid leave and job protection to parents, have been attacked as potentially inefficient and as harmful to those they are desgned to help. This article challenges the suggestion that existing arrangements maximize social welfare and that family-friendly reforms will indermine efficiency. Using dynamic game-theoretic models, it explains how management-worker interactions can get stuck in equilibria that generate less wellbeing overall than more family-friendly alternatives, and it shows how family-friendly arrangements may be difficult to maintain despite their potential for making everyone better off. The article speculates on measures that might foster the adoption and stability of family-friendly workplace forms
The recent surge of women and mothers into the workforce has generated a call for changes that make it easier to combine employment with family life. Because neoclassical economic theory assumes that existing workplace structures are efficient, suggestions for reform have encountered resistance on the grounds that family-friendly reforms will prove costly for firms and society as a whole. In particular, so-called "accommodation mandates", wich require employers to extent benefits like paid leave and job protection to parents, have been attacked as potentially inefficient and as harmful to those they are desgned to help. This article challenges the suggestion that existing arrangements maximize social welfare and that family-friendly reforms will indermine efficiency. Using dynamic game-theoretic models, it explains how management-worker interactions can get stuck in equilibria that generate less wellbeing overall than more family-friendly alternatives, and it shows how family-friendly arrangements may be difficult to maintain despite their potential for making everyone better off. The article speculates on measures that might foster the adoption and stability of family-friendly workplace forms
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